Tell me a bit about your family and how you grew up.

My family background is likely a lot more relaxing than most Asian Americans', in that my parents respect me more than most Asian parents respect their 24 year olds, probably. We had very limited exposure to other Asian families growing up, so my parents' values were in a vacuum. They had to pick and choose the values they wanted to espouse, since they didn't have other Asian families or friends around them to validate their experiences. My parents are Chinese, but they were fluent in English by the time I was born and they had the choice to raise me in Chinese or English. They chose to raise me in English because they were worried that if they raised me in Chinese, I would be bad at both languages. After a few years of taking Chinese in college, I was at the level of other Chinese Americans I knew who were raised in Chinese anyway.

The only consistent value that my parents have instilled upon me since birth was success. They never said how to be successful, though. That wasn't on purpose, but the result was that it was up to me to decide how to be successful. Growing up, I've become very passionate about a few things and have made a full commitment to them. I'd easily invest 15-20 hours a week trying to get better at whatever I was passionate about, but when I was younger, I wasn't as talented of a person and I didn't accomplish that much. I remember always being disappointed and frustrated that I'd work harder than other people but I wouldn't receive the recognition, or not be as good as people who seemed to work a lot less hard at what I considered my craft. That was a consistent theme as I left high school and through college. Many of my passions didn't really pay off until shortly after college.

The first thing that started paying off for me was making a full investment in programming. I got pretty good pretty quickly. I went to Hacker School, which was a competitive process to get involved with. People like to compare it to developer boot camps but it's extremely unfair — they're really different schools with different business models. I went to Hacker School and got my first programming job afterwards. That was the biggest turning point of when my parents started to respect me. I studied business formally in university and like every other Asian family; they believed that a degree should be the main indicator for the rest of your life. Even though I studied business, I went into programming and started making more money than I was as a management consultant. I proved I could create much more happiness and career stability for myself.

So, it was the combination of my parents having gone through their own existential crises when I was born, and my ability to prove that I could figure things out for myself while disregarding their advice that led to a background which was much more peaceful compared to most Asian families. Most of my struggles were unrelated to ethnic or economic identity; they came from being extremely frustrated and disappointed and angry that I wanted to achieve objectives within my passions but that couldn't be realized.

Did you become successful towards your passions because your passions changed, or your approach changed?

I think both — in high school and college, you need to earn tangible awards to receive validation for any passions or extracurricular activities you have. You constantly believe you need an actual result that you can put on a resume. I was really into lots of types of music in high school - playing trumpet, piano, and at the time, singing. I tried really hard at all three of them, and it never paid off. I was horrible at singing, and I never got that good at trumpet (ended up being really bad at it, actually). I got good at piano, but I think I made some fundamental mistakes when I was younger that created bad habits and put a low ceiling on how far I could grow. That was a problem with ego. When I was a young kid, I learned quickly and thought I didn't need a teacher. Though I practiced on my own, I eventually realized I had bad fundamentals and lost interest.

In college, I was passionate about ROTC but I kept getting injured because I didn't know how to run properly. Socially, I didn't know how to fit in, so I was always kind of an outcast. Even though I would work out a ton to be really fit for ROTC, it never paid off and I left after my freshman year. In my final recommendations with ROTC, none of my hard work showed through. All they said was that my fitness and leadership were poor because I was constantly injured and more interested in studying for my classes than I was for showing up to volunteer for ROTC events. I still think about how invested I was in those activities, but having that not paid off.

My dad told me that if I wanted to prove my worth, I had to do it in a means that was very objective. Music was subjective, and favoritism always comes into play with ROTC. He said it because he wanted me to go into more academic passions instead of performance or fitness based passions, but that's not what I did. I became really passionate about breaking and dance during college. It's not an objective endeavor, but it's something you create for yourself, by yourself, for no reason. When you start breaking, it's very clear that there is nothing you will earn from it. There's no degree or prize money - you won't get any real thumbs up. A lot of guys start because they want to get attention from girls, and at the time, I was having problems with girls, but for some reason that connection never came into my mind. I just got really into it and became very passionate about it.

Do you think people having a "twenties crisis" suffer from lack of passion or direction?

I don't believe in a twenties crisis. I believe a crisis is a crisis, no matter what age. Crises in the twenties often come from not giving yourself enough direction. My direction comes from breaking, programming, and hip hop. That drives all of my decisions now. There was a time when all I'd do was program during the day, practice at night, work out in the morning, and see my girlfriend on the weekends. I was wildly successful during this time. That's what I believe — if you can create a passion for yourself, not for anyone else, you can be wildly successful. Granted, it should be a constructive passion. You can't be passionate about shopping or movies; that only means you really enjoy consuming them. I don't think consumption is inherently negative, but if you're not thinking about designing clothes or writing movies, then you don't have a creative, constructive passion just yet. That's fine, but people have to get there. If you're in a crisis, I believe you're not passionate about something just yet to give yourself that direction.

Do you think everyone has the potential to be constructively passionate about anything?

No, I don't think you can be all of the sudden passionate about something. To be passionate means it's your biggest source of frustration. Breaking has caused me so much frustration and anguish because of injuries or because I couldn't learn certain moves. Programming has also given me frustrations. To be capable of being passionate, you have to make a daily commitment to it and work through frustrations. That's hard — most people in our generation can't really do that. It gets tough very quickly and you quickly see you're not as talented as you think you are.

Previous generations were fine with "making a living"; does our generation demand more passion?

I don't know if I can answer. The difference between our generation and our parents' generation is massive. I think this gap is bigger than any other generational gap in history, due to technology, internet, and globalization. Those things created a huge generation gap, so maybe this need for passion is unique to us. If you're a member of our generation, you have to make a choice about what you want to do with your own life. For a lot of people, like Asian Americans for instance, you have to make a decision on which values influence you. A lot of Asian and American values are incompatible. If you're Chinese American and have a traditional family, they want you to have kids and live at home. But if you're an Asian guy trying to get a girlfriend in America, it's going to be incredibly hard to date if you're living at home with your parents. A lot of these values conflict. You have to decide what you want to do regarding those values. That's a trade off you have to make — there's no easy decision. Either way, you'll be making people angry. This is one of those situations where someone will be unhappy no matter what you do.

Now, universities are starting to become pretty useless. They're more expensive than ever, but also more useless than ever. After you spend 4 years pursuing a degree, but you discover you hate the field you're in — let's say banking after you get a finance degree — what do you do? Your parents will want you not to screw yourself over, but if you're unhappy, you'll have to take a huge risk. You definitely won't make everyone happy. You'll probably be unemployed for a while. If you're single and don't have kids, then there's really nothing to risk. I was unemployed for five months between quitting my management consulting job and getting my programming job. It was scary. I quit my job, then tried to learn to program, and eventually got a new job. It's not easy. At the time when I did it, I was really excited but now looking back on it, I wasn't that smart; I was lucky. There are programmers who are much smarter than I am, even now a year later, and they didn't have nearly as easy of a time. You have to take a risk. It might not work out, but in the end, you have to make a decision. It's your life. You might have to do something no one else is supportive of.

Did you always know you wanted to get into the field you're currently in?

I did an internship in my second semester of my senior year at Venmo when I was in Philadelphia. At the time, they were an extremely small start up. When I left, there were only 4 people, including the two founders. That was my first exposure to programming and people who were really passionate about what they were working on. From then on, I became really interested in building things using the internet and programming.

I didn't know anything about it before going in, except that anyone could do it. The cofounders were incredibly smart people, but the first non-founding employee didn't have a programming experience and only learned after joining. He ended up working there for 3 years and was the head of their engineering group for a while. I believe now, he's started his own thing. He and the second non-founding employee, who came from investment banking, hadn't studied engineering formally, but became a super senior developer. Those two non-founding employees were big influences on me, and inspired me to learn that you can get into programming whenever.

At what point did you decide to make the switch from what you studied in school to this current field?

I really enjoyed business when I studied it, and a lot of my best friends in college were from the business school, but I feel like my takeaway was that a business degree was useless. True value creation comes from being able to build, not from knowing how to build a discounted cash flow model or understanding how to do an industry analysis. Those are easy things to do that I could've learned from blog posts. I didn't have to spend all that tuition to learn that. One of the scariest things about working in business is that you have to be hired to make a living. You're incapable of freelancing and adding value on a single-person level. You rely on other industry veterans to bring you work to do. You rely on cash flows from past deals or from limited partners to be able to pay for your office space. You end up not proving that you added any value until years later, possibly after you've left the firm, before your clients realize you actually helped. It's a scary place to be in and it's not good for the people in that industry.

Do you think recent college graduates are taking the right approaches to developing their careers?

Careers are something most people our age have a very juvenile understanding of. Since I'm in tech, people are very excited about start-ups. People will be excited for their job at Google, but when I hear that, it doesn't elicit any emotional response from me. It elicits more questioning — what group are you in? What do you think of your supervisor? At my point, two years out of college, I've worked for three different companies. I know now that the company name has nothing to do with the actual job that you do. Working at Google means nothing. If you were on the Google Reader project, you probably hate Google - they killed an awesome project. Whereas if you were on the Gmail team, you probably love Google. These are two different teams with different supervisors and different opinions. You can't be excited or disappointed about a job just based on the name. What it really comes down to is who you're working with on the team, and who is giving you orders. If you're unhappy with a company, you're likely rejecting the supervisor, not the company. You should be picking jobs based on your boss, not based on the brand name.

Why do you think twenty-somethings are driven by prestige?

I can't really answer; I never cared about prestige. In my twenties, I became something of a hipster and stopped being interested in something once it became a cliche. This happened with start-ups, because I got sick of the term once it became prestigious. I've been like that for a long time, even for sports. I used to watch basketball and was a fan of the Celtics before they were good. When they traded for good players and the media made them look like superheroes, I didn't like them anymore. For me, when I see something as prestigious, that means other people are inflating the value of it and there's no actual substance behind that extra value. If you're actually in that job, the prestige doesn't do anything more for you. If you're choosing between identical jobs A and B, but job A is more prestigious, I'd choose job B — that prestige isn't real value. In a real sense, job B is more valuable because prestige is driving job A up. That's a thought process I share with Paul Graham, who has a pithy way of describing prestige.

Some CEOs comment that today's graduates are missing out by not working their way up in a company, and are missing out on many potential advancement opportunities. Since you've worked at a few places now, what do you think of that view?

I think that's very narrow-sighted — that assumes you already know what you want to commit to. A meaningful commitment doesn't necessarily mean you're having fun with it. Most of the time, I'm struggling to learn a programming framework or dealing with dance injuries. The commitment itself isn't fun, but I'm choosing to make that commitment because I'm excited about what I can accomplish. To me, the commitment he's addressing is a separate issue. What that CEO is saying is that people don't want to commit, but his generation created a world for us where commitment is neither necessary or sometimes, even an option. It's not the case now that you will graduate, find a job, and work there for the rest of your life. Many companies now are not nearly as loyal to their employees as some of the companies were in the past. We have a lot of structural unemployment now. We have so many job openings, but the unemployed workforce isn't trying to fulfill them. A lot of that is because people aren't socialized or educated for those roles. There's a larger problem. I think if a young, successful person said what this CEO said, it might be different, but the league of current CEOs come from a different generation. This generation gap is huge, and their perspectives are just not fair to reflect upon our generation. There are also two different issues in this statement: being capable of committing, and wanting to commit. For me, I'd say that I'm capable of making a strong commitment, but there is a small number of things I'm willing to make that commitment for. I wouldn't make a commitment to reach a higher place just to be there — I'd be higher on the hill, but is that the hill I want to be on?

Are you strongly influenced by any mentors, or is your lifeview mostly formed from your own experiences?

It's about half and half. A lot of it comes from doing things and failing. It's probably my own experiences, and any mentoring that happened wasn't really in-person. I'd read blog posts by smart people. Almost none of these world perspectives come from a mentor. I believe people only learn when they want to learn and they are ready to take in a certain lesson. I feel like mentorship itself is an ineffective way to grow or learn, because a mentor can only help as a mentee wants to be helped. You can't just say, "I'm young and inexperienced and want to absorb everything" — you should have more specific interests about certain topics. If you just want to be a sponge and absorb everything, you have bigger problems and haven't decided what you're most interested in. To me, that is a disconnect. People usually say to me, "I hope you don't learn this the hard way," but to me, the hard way is the only way to learn. Until you live through something yourself, you can't internalize the lesson.

How about people who can't find passions? Is it personality or an age-driven thing?

I think it's a little personality driven — I always made full commitments growing up. I strongly believe that innate talent has very little relevance to success. I believe in compounding hard work. Even if you make a 1% improvement every day, that work compounds and before you know it, you'll be much better, but you have to make that commitment. You're built to fail if you believe you'll always have fun pursuing your interests. You need to know that it will suck. You will never accomplish your dreams if you always succumb to resistance and fear of what bad stuff might come out of commitment. It's a daily battle, and you have to know that in the end, the only investment that matters is your time and effort. You can't buy your way into greatness. Money is very overvalued, but at the same time, your time and effort is undervalued. If you want to accomplish something, wake up an hour earlier and dedicate something to your goal. If you want to lose weight, wake up an hour earlier and walk. If you want to learn how to program, wake up an hour earlier and learn how to program. You have to find a way to make it a part of your lifestyle. That's something I believe in. If you have an average lifestyle, you will have an average body and mind. If you have a productive lifestyle, you will have a productive body and mind. If you want a tangible difference, it has to be a lifestyle change.

Do you think socially active extroverts are at a disadvantage without this time to develop themselves?

I think it depends on how you're socializing. Some people think friendships are only intact when you see people regularly, which I think is a juvenile perspective. I see one of my best friends only once or twice a month at most. There are people at work who I see so much more frequently, but I wouldn't say they are better friends just because I see them. At the same time, if you want to be best friends with someone, you don't need to see them every single day. Building your own lives independently is important. You have to be able to grow separately in any relationship, including romantic, platonic, and parent/child relationships.

Some people want to socialize more because they want to be better at socializing — that's a good reason to socialize. If you're procrastinating, that's a bad reason. If you're chilling, that's a good reason. You should work hard and play hard, but don't do both at the same time. If you're trying to work, just work and don't be chilling and socializing. I don't believe in going to the gym with gym buddies. That's an example of trying to work and play at the same time. If it helps you accomplish what you want to accomplish, then that's fine.

How do you view yourself? Do you think others view you this way?

I have no idea how others view me and I don't really think about it too much. I have extremely high standards for myself and for other people. I have low tolerance for incompetence, and it shows in the way that I work and the way that I live. I have high standards for other people and I don't care how young I am or how old they are — aptitude is a universal criteria. That's a big part of how I function in a work setting.

In a normal life setting, it's less about professional aptitude and more about how good of a person you are. I have a very specific definition for a good person. You have to be doing good. It has nothing to do with intentions or lack of bad intentions. Being a bad person is pretty obvious, but being a good person is not nearly as obvious. There are a lot of people out there without any bad intentions. "He's kinda boring but he's a good person," or "He doesn't conduct himself well but he's a good person" means he's a not a good person. Being a good person is a constant investment. The default is not "good", you have to constantly prove that you're a good person. If you're not proving you're a good person through good deeds, then all that really means is at most you're a harmless person. In a social setting, are you making jokes to make people laugh, or are you telling jokes to make people laugh at someone else? One is characteristic of a good person, and one a bad person, even if you're making some people laugh a lot harder.

A lot of your goals are for yourself - how does that impact those you care about?

I believe others respect you only when you start respecting yourself. A lot of that means not being servile to someone before they've earned your respect. If I don't know someone well, I have no problem saying no. If the person is my friend, then they are my friend for a reason. For my small number of friends, I'll still do things for them even if I don't want to.

I do feel like I'm a little too indifferent about the way the average person perceives me - I kind of wish I cared more, but I don't. I care about being a good friend, boyfriend, or son to the small number of people I do care about.

Have you ever been dissatisfied with any part of yourself, and what did you do to change it?

On a high level, I was dissatisfied with my career so I went to Hacker School. I used to be dissatisfied with the types of friends I had, before I internalized the "others respect me only when I respect myself" mindset. I consider myself a very loyal person. When I was younger, my loyalty was unparalleled but it was cheap. A lot of people took advantage of me. It took a long time for me to respect myself.

Make a deep commitment to a small number of people who have earned it. That goes back to that old CEO about young people not making a commitment to reach a high spot — do you know what spot you want to reach a peak in? Pick the areas you want to invest in first, then make deep investments. I was making deep investments first and that's made me unhappy.

Is there a single statement that would sum up your worldview?

My whole life perspective comes down to looking at myself as a paintbrush and my world as a canvas. That's the overarching theme of everything. I have a finite amount of resources to be able to create the most awesome painting that I can. I'm a very ambitious person. There's so much I want to accomplish and not enough time or energy or money to be able to accomplish all of it. How can I make the best painting of my life out of what few resources I have? That's really what drives a lot of my thought processes. Work hard and play hard, but not both at the same time. That's the recipe for an ugly painting. Invest a lot in a ton of different people? That's a recipe for not being able to commit to a small number of techniques or materials to make a good painting. Respect yourself before you respect others? That's how you make the investment to build meaningful relationships out of it. In the end, making that deep commitment every single day, even when it's hard — your first however many paint strokes are going to be ugly, they're gonna suck, and people are going to tell it to your face. They won't be nice. You have to persevere through that. You might not even succeed. In the end, if you really want it, you have to try. ■